More Liberated Than Ever

I am glad to be back to digging in to politics, race, class, and especially gender on right be done. The last job I took was all consuming, so all consuming that I quit. So I'm back. I'm trying to be a bit lighter, a bit sillier, and a bit less mean, but there's only so much a coot like me can do, so here goes.

I am buying new furniture.

In this case, the furniture that I am considering buying is AWESOME! It is unbelievably cool, elegant, and efficient. Essentially, I am buying Murphy Beds on steroids. But you don't have to trust me on this account. Check out the video of this furniture transitioning HERE.

This bed is called the Ito, like "If the glove don't fit..,"

And I know you aren't reading this because you are interested in the living section of People magazine, although you might be, but that's not why you're reading this. However, for the last 6 years, it has been the basic tenant of this blog that every action we have is always already laden with prejudice, and that extends to the furniture we buy.

So how is my furniture purchase laden with prejudice? Well, this is a purchase made necessary by choices driven by a liberation philosophy. On the opposite end of liberation philosophy is "Extreme Mascunility." A major tenant of extreme masculinity is that men must subjectify themselves, that is to say that they must be the subjects of their actions, instead of the objects. This is an obvious corollary to the objectifying that men do with women, notably in the famous meat grinder Hustler cover seen here.

She looks cold.

By the way, the image on the left was this year's December Playboy cover, as posted on Sharenator.

So much for keeping it light...

Like the boy scouts, the subjectified man must always "be prepared." If we are not prepared, we may find ourselves objectified, and we all know what objectification leads too, right ladies? (For reference, see Hustler's 1978 cover.)



Subjectified men are large and in charge. It is a sad fact of history that whenever too much masculinity gets comfortable, something gets conquered. In the latest installment of the ridiculous reality show that is Extreme Masculinity, American suburban men are conquering their landscapes with their McMansions. After all, our home is our castle, and we must rule all we can see.

Being prepared, and being large and in charge are as closely related as newly weds in Arkansas (that one was for you, Steph), and both play a substantial role in how men choose to live. In a society where capitalism is corrupted by commercialism, wherever there is a need, there is something to fill that need, and sometimes if there is no need, there is a marketing campaign that will create a need.

Picking up our dogs poop with a bag may be the time-tested way of dealing with that problem, but Martha Stewart will sell a pooper scooper (see left) that will do it for us faster, cleaner, and more wastefully. Renting a rug shampooer, or hiring someone to shampoo a rug would objectify us, so we buy a cut rate carpet shampooer to do it ourselves. Once a year or so, we need a truck, so we buy a truck and haul it around with us for the other 350 days. Our cars are awesome, our televisions are terrific, our tools can repair anything, our collections are complete, our technology is up-to-date, our carpets are shampooed, and our pooper is mother-fucking scoopered. Don't worry, we think to ourselves, we got this.

Metastasizing McMansion complex.

In order to keep all of this preparation in our homes, we need a garage for our truck(s), a basement to store our carpet cleaner, a shed for our tools, a room dedicated solely to our televisions, and so on and so forth. Thus was born the McMansion. A real man never has to make a choice. If we want something, we conquer it.

But we are all always already both subjects and objects in life. We are all reliant on our societies, our families, our friends, our coworkers, our communities, and yes our government, just as they are all reliant on us. Human beings are super-socializers by nature and necessity. And the line between subject and object is as imaginary as Obamacare death panels. The true path to liberation isn't encapsulating ourselves in fiefdoms made of ticky-tacky. Men must liberate ourselves. We must stop taking our lessons from "Preppers," and start reinvesting in our neighborhoods and our families.

With all of this in mind, I decided that liberation means living smaller, slower, and more socially. I decided that not "conquering" means living sustainably with a lifestyle that is more familiar in the rest of the globally developed nations, particularly in Europe and Japan. That means making choices and setting priorities. That means making do, which is the part of "being prepared" that I chose to keep from extreme masculinity.

It is sad that we are losing the philosophy of "making do" in all of this commercialized ecstasy. It is sad because study after study shows that people are happier when they do prioritize, and when they make do. Study after study shows that the house, the car, the job, and even Martha Stewart's Pooper Scooper can make us happy for up to a year, but usually more like six months, and it is simply not worth the debt,  the stress, the carbon footprint, the water demands, and the deep neurotic need to objectify the people in our lives. Because after the six months of happiness are over, the problems remain.

When I talk like that, people think I'm being a martyr. When I say I like living smaller, slower, and more socially, they think I mean that my conscience likes it. But when I look at the Ito above, I realize that modern engineering has made it possible to live comfortably and truly happily without all the toys, and without the McMansion. And when I see this beautiful desk that we will be putting in for one of the boys, I am glad that I am handing on that realization to the next generation. Because when we live small, we bump into one another. And when we bump into our loved ones, our neighbors, and our community, we are forced to think differently, and stretched to be happier, more liberated people.

Thanks for reading again after all this time.